What was Turturro doing with 'Romance & Cigarettes'?

Film review: John Turturro’s “Romance & Cigarettes” is a musical-comedy that’s not particularly musical or funny.

Al Alexander

John Turturro’s “Romance & Cigarettes” is a musical-comedy that’s not particularly musical or funny.

Yes, the exuberance of the stellar cast is as impressive as Turturro’s vivid imagination, but it’s not enough to save the film. Mostly, James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Christopher Walken, Steve Buscemi and numerous others fall flat on their movie star faces.

It’s a little embarrassing to watch them flap around like fish on a pier, futilely trying to make sense on a nonsensical conceit that calls upon them to sing along to classic ’60s hits that have only the slightest connection to their characters’ various dilemmas. Dilemmas that aren’t all that original or interesting.

That is unless you’re one of the two or three people that never saw a picture about a cheating husband (Gandolfini), a perturbed wife (Sarandon) and a vamping mistress (Winslet) duking it out within the parameters of a blue-collar love triangle set in Queens.

Had Turturro, taking his third and least successful stab at filmmaking, limited the focus to those three combatants, “Romance” might have been more palatable. But he adds too many characters and stranded subplots, turning his film into an unwieldy monster.

Not that some of that excess isn’t interesting: Buscemi as Gandolfini’s best pal and worst adviser and Elaine Stritch as the mother of the artist formerly known as Tony Soprano are terrific in their all-too-brief appearances. But most, like Mandy Moore, Mary Louise Parker and Aida Turturro (John’s cousin) as Gandolfini’s daughters, and Walken and Eddie Izzard as the rank and file of Sarandon’s support network, go absolutely nowhere. Why are they even in the film?

Better question: What was Turturro’s goal?

It’s hard to fault his originality, though, especially in a year when so many cookie-cutter movies have come and gone faster than Nicole Richie’s jail sentence. It’s truly fascinating to watch Gandolfini sing and dance to “A Man Without Love” with a gaggle of cops, carpenters and sanitation workers rhythmically hoofing with him.

Not enough, however, to sustain a movie that plays more like the work of a NYU graduate film student than a gaggle of proven Hollywood talents.

No wonder “Romance & Cigarettes” has been collecting dust since its debut at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. It probably should have stayed there a little longer. Maybe forever.

Grade: C

Rate R. “Romance & Cigarettes” contains sexual content and language.

Video of "A Man Without Love," which features Gandolfini singing...brace yourself Soprano fans.